Lead Scrum Master/ Release Train Engineer

Neelavathi Jeyakumar, MBA, PMP, RTE, SASM

Alpharetta, GA 404-***-**** *****.***@*****.*** US Citizen

Servant Leader, leading large IT enterprises software development activities using Lean-agile methodology, motivating executives and stakeholders to embrace Agile transformation journey. Facilitator, helping teams to self-organize, self-manage, and deliver business value on time by removing impediments and mitigating risk with critical thinking skills. A servant-leader who fosters communication, teamwork, and collaboration with problem solving, analytical and influencing skills.

WORK EXPERIENCE

Lead Scrum Master/ Release Train Engineer - (11/2022 to Present)

ELEVANCE HEALTH - ATLANTA, GA

Serving as Lead Scrum Master/RTE to facilitate preparation and readiness for ART events and assist the team in preparation for ART activities, including PI Planning, System Demos, and Inspect and Adapt.

Efficiently leading multiple Scrum teams and SMs for creating innovative Data Science applications.

Helping multiple Data science teams to manage risks and dependencies and escalating and resolving impediments on time to deliver innovative solutions using state of the art LLM models using Gen AI.

Coordinating activities for Delivering Data science solutions to customers by effectively maintaining backlog items.

Driving improvement through Inspect and Adapt workshops.

Communicating Project Milestones and deliverables to leadership teams in a timely manner like flow time, predictability and velocity.

Exceptionally knowledgeable and expert user of product and program management related tools (JIRA, Confluence, Jira Align) and techniques.

Strongly value team members’ inputs/ suggestions for process improvements and make sure good practices and processes are in place to deliver excellent quality AI/ ML products to customers thereby reducing healthcare costs.

Collaborating with various stakeholders like PO/PM, Team lead, change management and other external team members to effectively plan and deliver initiatives as planned on time.

Coaching teams, and leading and mentoring other Scrum Masters in Lean-Agile practices and mindset.

Senior Scrum Master - (01/2022 to 10/2022)

FIDELITY INVESTMENTS -DURHAM, NC

Worked as a Senior Scrum Master for Fidelity Charitable Business team to Facilitate Team Planning events (PI and Iteration planning) and scrum ceremonies.

Helping the team to manage risks and dependencies and escalating and tracking impediments.

Helping Agile teams to develop best practices for learning and improving the best development processes through collaboration and adherence to best practices.

Organizing Agile meets with Scrum Masters to retrospect and develop practices which will be helpful for all teams to learn and improve.

Coordinating Release activities with DevOps and release team to deploy the deliverables into production.

Coordinated activities with RTE for PI planning and helped Product Manager to develop Product roadmap for upcoming PIs.

Facilitated Weekly RCA calls with Teams to eliminate defect escapes and improve code quality.

Facilitated daily scrums, sprint reviews, Iteration Retrospective and Iteration planning meetings to ensure full team engagement. Facilitate all team meetings, including Daily Stand-ups, Iteration Planning, Iteration Review, and facilitated weekly Scrum of Scrum coordination meeting and coordinated dependencies between interrelated and external teams.

Senior Scrum Master - (12/2020 to 07/2021)

ANTHEM -ATLANTA, GA

Served as Senior Scrum Master/RTE to Facilitate Team Planning events and scrum ceremonies, supporting Release Manager for Production release activity.

Coaching teams, and Scrum Masters in Lean-Agile practices and mindset.

Created project/ program plan to align Team Objectives into Program Objectives.

Helped three teams (Data Science, Advanced analytics, and Data Engineering) to manage risks and dependencies and escalating and tracking impediments as a Servant leader.

Coordinating activities for Delivering Personalized recommendation to customers by mitigating issues coming out of set up and implementation on a 2-week iteration cycle.

Driving improvement through operational excellence to deliver Leading edge Healthcare AI solutions to members.

Facilitating New API Enhancement to deliver into production with efficient collaboration between various teams within Data Science initiative.

Resolved issues and impediments by actively listening to team concerns, protecting team members from interruptions and distractions to maximize productivity.

Led and facilitated activities for AWS Cloud Migration. Deeply knowledgeable on AWS Cloud concepts.

Senior Scrum Master/Agile Project Manager- (03/2019 to 06/2020)

IBM - SMYRNA, GA

Created a project and Risk Mitigation Plan to manage and align key stakeholder expectations and formed EDW Initiative for GHHS program Scrum teams to attain release goals and milestones.

Developed Program and Project Portfolio and Dashboards for reporting (JIRA). Used Scrum and Kanban board to assist teams to visualize daily Work efforts. Help team to establish and adhere to Team working Agreements by setting clear goals.

Implemented Agile COE group to coordinate with other Scrum Masters and to maintain Standard Scrum Practice. Developed templates and training materials for Junior SMs and team members to onboard and learn quickly.

Empowered teams to self-organize and achieve project objectives. Encouraged team members to be cross functional to help each other to complete iteration commitment.

Communicated project dependencies, status to appropriate business stakeholders on time.

Senior Scrum Master/RTE – (01/2018 to 02/2019)

SAI GLOBAL (HEXAWARE - EMPLOYER), ALPHARETTA, GA

Led 2-3 Scrum teams to implement the best Agile framework (Used Scrum/Kanban) as per team functionality/Feature development for GRC (Risk and Compliance) software product development, delivering quick releases in brief time to accommodate customer.

Coordinated preparation and readiness for Agile release train (ART) events, including Program increment (PI) Planning, System Demos, Inspect and Adapt sessions, PI retrospectives and inter-team coordination and program board tasks. Prepared and presented PI performance reviews.

Facilitated weekly Scrum of Scrums (SOS) meeting to collaborate between different teams for updates, risk, and dependencies.

Scrum Master – (11/2014 to 11/2017)

MCKESSON PROVIDER TECHNOLOGIES, Alpharetta, GA

Empowered teams to adapt SAFe Scrum process by leading geographically distributed teams and achieving 100% sprint goals.

Used negotiation and conflict resolution skills, helping teams resolve issues early and quickly.

Facilitated and participated in PI planning session. Worked with RTE and other teams in ART to collaborate with Release planning events to plan features based on business value and priority.

Guided and helped Product owner to maintain healthy product backlog, prioritize and refine for upcoming iterations. Coached team about story point estimation by Planning poker, T-shirt sizing methods.

Developed Project Dashboard and reported KPIs to executives in a timely manner with strong organizational and tracking skills.

Coordinated cross functional teams’ activities to deliver Minimum viable product (MVP) on time. Influenced Key Project Stakeholders to take important business decisions in a fast-paced agile development environment.

QA Lead – (11/2011 to 10/2014)

MCKESSON PROVIDER TECHNOLOGIES, Alpharetta, GA

Led QA Analyst team for delivering EHR product in Scrum environment. Evaluated and delivered as per product specification ahead of schedule and deployed on time to fulfill regulatory timeline.

Validated User stories by creating testing strategies and executed upon deployment. Performed Smoke test and ran and maintained automated regression test suite. Hands on EDI transactions process using CLI/FTP protocols.

Coordinated testing activities to deliver in each release cycle by integrating CI/CD deployment process.

Delivered excellent quality products by System testing, Regression testing, Functional and Automation testing for Client/Server and Web based applications.

Lead QA Analyst- (03/2011 to 11/2011)

AUTOTRADER.COM (MODIS IT CONSULTING), Atlanta, GA

Coordinated testing activities to deliver quality software before each release into production and supported GO Live activities.

Delivered excellent quality products by System testing, Regression testing, Functional and Automation testing for Client/Server and Web based applications.

QA Analyst- (12/2006 to 12/2010)

AT&T, Atlanta, GA

SKILLS

Communication and Good Listening Power

Coaching and Mentoring

People skills with empathy and optimism

Conflict Resolution and Negotiation

Technical skills (Programing languages, SQL, Cloud computing services (AWS, GCP and Azure).

Project management tools (JIRA, Jira Align, Jama, Rally, TFS, Confluence, MS Project and VersionOne).

Program Management Skills – Cost, Resource and Time management.

EDUCATION

Master of Business Administration MBA @ UIUC (University of Illinois) – Specialized in Project management and Data Analytics.

CERTIFICATIONS / LICENSES

Project Management Institute (PMI) – PMP - 03/2026

SAFe Advanced Scrum Master - 02/2026

SAFe Release Train Engineer- 02/2026

Professional Scrum Master – Lifetime Active from 10/2014

LINKS

Digital Badges for Certifications:

https://www.credly.com/users/neelavathi-jeyakumar/badges

https://www.linkedin.com/in/neela-jeyakumar/

Contact this candidate